14,700 confirmed mpox cases reported in 2024 in Africa: WHO

KINSHASA, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- About 14,700 confirmed mpox cases, including 66 deaths, were reported in 20 African countries from January 2024 to Jan. 5, 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday.

The confirmed cases represent only a subset of suspected cases, the WHO said. It previously said that a significant number of suspected mpox cases remain untested and "thus never get confirmed" in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to limited diagnostic capacity.

The ongoing outbreak is being driven by multiple clades of the virus, including the Clade Ib variant, which is predominantly spreading in the DRC and neighboring countries, the WHO said in its latest report.

Imported travel-related cases caused by the Clade Ib variant and secondary transmission from these cases have also been detected outside Africa. The WHO reported that these imported cases were primarily among adults who traveled during their incubation